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Topic: Your Outlook on the World (Read 1840 times)

If you had to choose one image to serve as a visual representation of your outlook on life, the world, or yourself, what image would it be? Post it! (Or describe it if you've never found one that fits you.)

If the concept isn't clear, I guess another way to phrase this would be: If someone could see through your mind's eye, what would the world look like to them?

“When I was a fighting man, the kettle-drums they beat;The people scattered gold-dust before my horse’s feet;But now I am a great king, the people hound my trackWith poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back.”

Do you all really view the world as burning, falling, chaotic? Or are you just trying to be funny?

I don't. I think the world is a much better place than it was 500+ years ago.

That said, I prefer to watch world from a safe distance, through a window in my comfortable little snail's shell. Not because the world is a bad place, but because what's normal for you is often uncomfortable for me. Like, talking on the phone. Or on Skype. Valeria knows I'd rather write in Skype chat than actually talk xD

I like being social and going go the coffee shop and hanging out with people, for a short bit, and only if the conversation doesn't touch on anything personal. I much prefer just doing my own thing and being around people who aren't going to bother me about doing my own thing.

I much prefer just doing digital things, puttering around my garden, and hanging out with the family as opposed to trying to work and deal with strangers out in the world.

Do you all really view the world as burning, falling, chaotic? Or are you just trying to be funny?

I see us backsliding. But that happens now and then and we correct it.

When I was a kid it was a given that we would blow ourselves up. The youth all believed that down to our silly toes. People who could built bomb shelters. There were drills in a lot of schools for nuclear attacks (but not my school). There was a movie or two every year about the nuclear apocalypse. Kind of like the zombies now lol. We talked about it a lot. It was an excuse for doing what you felt like. Nobody thought we'd live to get old. Holy cow, nobody thought the Berlin Wall would come down or the Soviet Union would break up. Nobody. We were going to kill each other and there wasn't any other option. Nearly 60,000 of my peers died in Vietnam. I have no idea how many Vietnamese or other peoples died. The government at any time could scoop you up and make you go. It was not a volunteer army like we have now. I joined in '77 and almost everyone I served with that was older had been drafted.

There were riots so bad that tanks were sent into the cities. It was not unusual to hear about the National Guard being sent in to cities because of rioting. There were lots and lots of riots and huge marches, it seems to me. My father-in-law was a LA City firefighter, and they couldn't go put out fires in certain parts of the city sometimes because they would get shot. He would tear up and his voice would break when he would talk of those days, taking fire while trying to help people, having to turn back. Oh, and that Miranda Rule that protects your rights when you're being dealt with by the police? We didn't always have that. I remember TV shows teaching us about it when it was new.

There was going to be a global ice age too, because of pollution. That one was pushed really hard on us and we bought into it and believed it. There weren't littering laws, and the accepted thing to do with the tin soda can or the glass soda bottle was to throw it out the car window when you were done. The ditches along the road were lined with trash all across America. The littering laws came in when I was a kid and people were not happy about it. Factories dumped waste at will into waterways and lands and people were just starting to figure out that might not be a good thing and do something about it. The land is so much cleaner now. The air is so much cleaner now. Water too.

There weren't seat belt laws, or motorcycle helmet laws, and kids rode loose in the car without car seats because Mom could put an arm across you and hold you in place if there was a wreck, of course. I remember riding in the car, standing in the front seat between my parents, going down the highway, probably over 70mph. That 55mph law really pissed people off when that came in.

You have microwave ovens, and artificial hearts, and personal computers, and cell phones that can talk to anyone on the planet. Lots of people survive cancer. There're replacement hips and knees. Cars have air conditioners and power steering and anti-lock brakes. There's a vaccination for chicken pox, for Christ's sake. Chicken pox. I had mumps and chicken pox and more than one type of measles and kids just don't have to go through that anymore. Parents don't have to lose their whole year's worth of vacation to stay home with their kid for a bout of chicken pox.

I think things have gotten worse recently than they were, say 10 years ago. I don't know if that's true or it's just the inevitable grumpy old fart syndrome settling in with me. I've turned into my grandparents lol! But I remember back and it seems to me that things are so much better than they used to be, in a quality of life sort of way, in what you can expect for your future. All my memories and views are from a U.S.-centric point of view, because we didn't have anywhere near the access to other places like you do now, there wasn't an internet. I really only knew what was going on with us.

Do you all really view the world as burning, falling, chaotic? Or are you just trying to be funny?

Only my personal world. In less than a year, I'll have my Master's Degree, and I'll have run out of excuses. Life is going to have to start, I'm going to have to become a real person. I'm not ready, I don't know my place in the world, and the world seems to be changing in big shifts, more often.

Do you all really view the world as burning, falling, chaotic? Or are you just trying to be funny?

Only my personal world. In less than a year, I'll have my Master's Degree, and I'll have run out of excuses. Life is going to have to start, I'm going to have to become a real person. I'm not ready, I don't know my place in the world, and the world seems to be changing in big shifts, more often.

It seems that way mostly because you're learning about the world in big chunks. Be comforted because most of us felt the same way as you.